Creating a City Wide Blackout at Night

A

armadillo

Well-known member
I am trying to create a city-wide blackout shot where the lights in the entire city go out in sections.

I am trying to think of the best way to approach this scene.

(I can't afford to have the city shut down its power for me)

Shoot at night with the building lights on and make them dark in post? How?

Attempt some sort of day for night shot?

Composite the whole thing?

Any suggestions are very welcome.
 
I would do some test with a day for night shot. I need a similar shot for an upcoming project I am working on and that is the route I decided to take.

Videocopilot.net has a good tutorial on day for night.
 
You give the security guy at the power company a bottle of whiskey to let you in and flip the breaker for a minute...
Doing the shot at night is going to be hard to do. Just blacking out the windows isn't enough, because you'll have light spills you'll also have to mask.
 
What you can do is set up your camera in the location you want and take the shot during the day. Pack a lunch and sit there till it gets dark and take the same shot at night with all the lights on (don't move your camera in the hours it takes to get dark).

Now you have the same shot, one day and one night. Now you need to colour correct the day shot into a night shot (there's lots of guides around to help you figure out how to do this). That gives you your blackout shot at night with no lights on. What you need to do now is take the real night shot and composite just the lights back on to your "blackout" shot. You can do this using a variety of luma key techniques.

That's really all there is to it. You now can use a bunch of masks and can control which parts of the shot have lights and which don't so you can simulate that rolling blackout kind of shot.

It's somewhat time consuming (especially getting the live plates) but should give you pretty good results.

Good luck!
 
I'd take a high-res still at night, then in Photoshop or whatever create a series of versions in which a few blocks at a time were blacked out. It needs to be done with some subtlety, e.g. car lights will stay on.
 
I think Fobdor has the best approach. The problem with attempting to convert a true night shot in post is the amount of illumination spill and highlights you'll have to deal with. Street lights, billboards and, of course, the ubiquitous automobiles will create so much stray light that you'll have a really tough time making the shot sell.

Go to Google or Yahoo images and type in "night skyline" and you'll get a bunch of night shots with various exposures. By studying them you can get some ideas as to how to best set up your shot and you can bring some of the images into PhotoShop to play with to try your hand at painting out building lights etc. It will give you a good handle on what you're up against.

Finally, you will find that about 4:30 a.m. is the point of least illumination in office buildings and street traffic. I'd try to catch some exposures at those early morning hours rather than before midnight when there's still a lot of activity.
 
Also, try to shoot day-for-night when it's overcast, direct shadows from the sun look out of place when you grade it for night
 
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